


Put the Blame on VTR

by echoslam



Category: Videodrome (1983)
Genre: 80's Music, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blondie - Freeform, Body Horror, Cheerful Whipping, Living Together, M/M, Sounding, Toronto, Weirdness, and they were ROOMMATES
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-07
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:22:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22593217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/echoslam/pseuds/echoslam
Summary: After failing to get what it wants from Max Renn, Videodrome decides to be kind and rewind.
Relationships: Max Renn/Harlan
Comments: 16
Kudos: 22
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	Put the Blame on VTR

**Author's Note:**

  * For [asuralucier](https://archiveofourown.org/users/asuralucier/gifts).



It wasn’t supposed to end this way.

The kneeling form of Max Renn crumbles into lifelessness on the lower deck of an abandoned vessel. Barry Convex lies dead on the ballroom floor, his tumors splitting him open like popcorn out of a paper bag. And as for Harlan? Well, there’s not much to see there. 

But Videodrome is not your typical genre fare. 

Let’s go back. Back to the beginning. Perhaps Max’s conversion needed a lighter touch.

A sitcom, not a horror show. 

_One way or another, I'm gonna find ya  
I'm gonna get ya, get ya, get ya, get ya_

  


* * *

  


The first time they meet it’s in a dive just off of Yonge Street. Max is looking for a new technician and he’s just gotten a referral from a guy who knows a guy. He needs someone with tight lips and loose moral integrity. Three minutes into the interview, he already knows the second part won’t be a problem.

“If it’s rogue signals you want, my net is never empty.” The man - Harlan is his name - waggles his eyebrows, and Max wonders if the stories about his reputation are fish tales as well. 

They discuss the plan for the clandestine operation. There’s a lot of “borrowing” involved - franchises from the lower forty-eight, obscure foreign porno, or really anything else they can get their hands on. Bonuses will be paid. Under the table, of course. 

After Max lays out his terms and conditions, they take a moment to gaze out the window as the smartly-dressed denizens of Toronto’s Financial District walk on by, pointedly ignoring the clientele behind the dingy diner counter. 

“So tell me - if I work for you, do I have to dress up and get up at seven AM like an asshole?”

“Get me what I need and you can set your own hours,” Max assures him. He pauses to let his eyes take in Harlan’s khaki and plaid ensemble. “And I think there’s nothing wrong with what you’re wearing.”

They shake on it, and from that day onward, Max is patrón forevermore.

  


* * *

  


  
Two years - two wonderful years of working together - pass by in a flash.

Max is going about his business when he spies Harlan slumped into a booth in that very same dive. He has a dejected expression on his face with a faraway look in his eyes. Beside him, his backpack looks full to bursting.

“Harlan!” He raises his hand in greeting as he walks in and seats himself across from him. “Funny seeing you here. What’s the matter?”

Harlan looks over at him, face surprised but still grim. 

“You’ve come to see me in my hour of darkness, patrón?” 

With a roll of his eyes, Max gestures for him to continue.

“It’s my landlady. You remember those tapes you wanted me to hold for you until the next broadcast? _Damon and Pythias_? Well, she went into my room and tried to watch one of 'em. Thought it was gonna be one of those classic films. I mean, it is classic, in a sense. ”

Max groans as he puts his face in his palms. The version of Damon and Pythias he had gotten from Masha contained scenes about a very special kind of friendship. Graphic ones.

“She called me a pervert and threw me out on my ass. Well! No one ever told me my lease had a ‘no obscenity’ rider!”

He bangs his fist on the table while Max looks on in sympathy.

“What’ll you do next?” he asks after a moment of silence has passed.

Harlan cocks his towards the back of the diner where the proprietor has busied himself with wiping down the counters. “Pops here told me there’s a mission I should check out. On Bathurst and Adelaide. Sounds as if they help out people in my situation all the time.”

“Aw geez, Harlan...” Max sits up straight as he feels a pang of pity mingled with guilt. He doesn’t like the sound of that a all. “Well, since I am somewhat culpable in the making of this situation...”

He grabs a napkin from the dispenser on the table and takes a pen out of his shirt pocket. 

“You know where my apartment is, right? The Fleetwood on St. Clair?”

Harlan nods noncommittally as Max jots down the address. 

“I’ve got some other business to take care of today, but swing by at around say, six o' clock and I’ll help you get settled in. There's not a lot of space, but hey, a friend in need...l”

“You’re asking me to stay? With you?” Harlan eyes go wide like a child’s. Max can’t help but find it rather endearing.

He gets a warm feeling inside him when Harlan finally reaches out and takes the napkin.

  


* * *

  


By the time he walks in the door, Harlan is already complienting the decor. He’s wild about the astronauts above the desk and bed and the portrait of Hitler in a tutu.

Max finds that having his ace engineer crash on his sofa isn’t half bad. Soon enough, he’s made a place for himself. His homemade posterboard commands pride of place from where it’s mounted on the living room wall: “HOME OF THE BUCCANEERS - PIRACY ON THE HIGH FREQUENCIES!” He admits to Max that he regrets eating the other sign. It would’ve made a nice addition. 

Surprisingly, the two of them get on like a house on fire. There's not much getting done in the way of additional housekeeping - Harlan's even worse than he is about that sort of thing. But at least his fellow buccaneer makes for a cheerful, if strange, conversation partner.

Bridey finally gets to take that well-deserved vacation. She doesn’t have to record those wake-up videos anymore, now that Harlan’s around.

Together they go to Spectacular Optical to pick up Harlan’s latest prescription. Max tries on one of the samples in the waiting area, and they both laugh at how absurd the molten hexagon shape of the frame looks against his cheekbones. 

They play _Combat_ together on Max’s Atari whenever they’re bored. After a month, the score is 100-10 in Harlan’s favor. Max has become accustomed to the sight of Harlan's red tank gunning down his own blue one over and over again without mercy. He should have known the Prince of Pirates would have superior reflexes. He stops and wonders why he ever bought this two player game when he'd only ever planned to live alone. He’s grateful now, though. Without Harlan, he would've been missing out.

It’s a thought Max keeps at the very back of his mind. Lose the vest and the plaid, and the pocket protector, and dear old Harland wasn’t a bad looking guy. There's something irresistibly likable about his frizzy hair and earnest smile. 

He feels his new roommate put his arm around his shoulder as they sit together watching the Rena King Show, and he doesn’t pull away. 

  


* * *

  


Harlan’s not a picky eater. He scarfs down Max’s leftover pizza crusts without complaint. His boss promises that sometime they’ll go out for Greek at that place Masha recommended.

“They’ve got belly dancing and everything,” he says, stating his endorsement.

“You’ve got a belly for dancing.” Harlan reaches out to Max’s form where it sits slouched on the sofa. He draws a line down his gut with his knuckle. 

“Right there. That’s where the tape will go.” 

Max chuckles nervously.

“What are you going on about now?”

“You’re a ticking time bomb, patrón. It’s like you swallowed a loaded gun and it’s about to go off. Gotta find a way to release all that tension.”

It ends up being Max who instigates it by accident the time they go out shopping at the home and garden centre.

“Put one of these over your head and you could pass for the frontman of Devo,” he’d said, gesturing at one of the flower pots with a chuckle. He caught a glint in Harlan's eye that makes him stop and catch himself.

He shows him that night when they’re alone, as though he wants to test him. Thanks to some last-minute home improvements, Max is strung up before him, waiting eagerly for him to whip it good.

Max doesn’t object so long as the television monitor stays on. The screen holds him transfixed, grounding his attention. His partner strikes the set before laying into his flesh.

He finally brings the whip down on hip and Max groans in both pain and euphoria. 

“Oh help me, he likes it.” He hears the grin in Harlan's voice, and it's enough to make him fully hard.

The agony is beautiful, wondrous. It makes him feel alive. Max realizes he likes to perform. 

  


* * *

  


It’s a lazy Saturday morning when he reads the headline in the Toronto Star

“LOCAL RADIO HOSTESS VANISHES,” screams the front page. It’s another article about Nicki Brand, the pop psychologist who’s been missing for two weeks.

“Video Killed the Radio Star.”

Max looks up at Harlan, startled. 

“Excuse me?” he asks, blinking his eyes as his roommate gets up from where he was seated and walks over to join him in the kitchenette. 

Harlan holds up a small plastic cassette tape.

“Found this in your Walkman.” Didn’t know you were a Buggles man.

Max chuckles and returns to his paper, but the sense of unease doesn’t leave him all day. 

  


* * *

  


The rod is practically gleaming. It’s cleaner than anything he’s ever seen in Harlan's lab, that's for sure.

Max is lying on his bed undressed. Harlan has moved the TeleRanger into the bedroom, and he watches the static to distract himself from his nervousness. He hears the click of a cap as Harlan slicks the rod with lubricant.

He asked for this, didn’t he? 

“Help me, Harlan,” he’d begged. His nerves have been on edge more and more these days, and only his guest seems to know how to get him what he needs.

His cock is soft enough to allow the sound an easy entrance, but under Harlan’s skilled hands he hardens - it happens so fast that the pain is a like a whiplash, making his eyes roll back in his head. 

He feels a prickling sensation on his stomach, in a line juts down from his sternum and bisects his navel. Harlan watches his face like it’s an oscilloscope, eyes searching for signs that he’s caught the hidden signal. He eases the rod into him slowly, prodding him where he knows he can feel it. Beneath him, Max shudders as he’s tuned like a fine instrument. 

Harlan’s a safecracker and he’s going to bust Max’s neural floodgates wide open.

“Si, patrón. This is how we should’ve done it from the start. You needed the electron gun, not your PPK.”

Before him, the television goes from static to clarity as Max reaches orgasm. There he is - there they both are in living color, Harlan watching intently as he comes with the sound firmly in place, trapped by his rigid flesh. 

The seam in his belly tears open then, and it gapes, hungry and wanting. 

His roommate is ready for it. He picks up the tape from the bedside table, and as he brings its close to the slit, Max swears he can feel its breathing.

“Got something I wanna play for you,” croons Harlan in a lilting singsong. 

Hands gripping the sheets with white knuckles, the only sounds Max can hear are his own moans and pants. Inside him, the tape finds purchase and begins to play. 

  


* * *

  


The next day, they ride the Red Rocket as they go about town on a leisurely errand run. Domestic bliss. All because he’d finally allowed Harlan to expand his horizons.

  


* * *

  


They’re both excited when they find out Blondie will be coming to Toronto on the final leg of their tour.

They decide to watch the concert from home. Why fight the crowd at Exhibition Stadium when you can enjoy the small screen in the comfort of your own home? 

They fling themselves in a lazy heap on the sofa, and Max feels content. Later they get up to dance and sing along off-pitch to “Heart of Glass,” arms waving and hips thrusting to the sound of syncopated percussion and the roll of the drum machine.

"Look at Debbie Harry!" Harlan exclaims. "She likes the way we dance!" It certainly looks like it, with the way she's smiling at them from the screen.

Max is happy to watch the world and let the world watch him. 

He’s so giddy that he doesn’t even notice when an electric thrum buzzes in the air and the walls of the room turn red.


End file.
